Hamas 'terror wing' follows CNN on Twitter

TEL AVIV – With over 28,000 Twitter followers, the official military wing of Hamas follows only seven organizations on its Twitter platform – CNN and six pan-Arab news networks and blogs.

Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigades, one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world, sends out nearly hourly English-language updates on its Twitter account, @AlqassamBrigade.

It has used the account to claim responsibility for numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilian population zones in the last few days as well as attacks against the Israel Air Force operating in the Gaza Strip.

In the 1990s, Obama was a speaker at events in Chicago’s large Palestinian immigrant community to raise funds for U.N. camps for Palestinian refugees. Abunimah recalls introducing Obama at one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for the Deheisha Palestinian camp in the West Bank.

“I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator – when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time,” stated Abuminah during an interview in 2008 with Democracy Now!, a nationally syndicated radio and television political program.

“I remember personally introducing [Obama] onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that’s just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation,” Abunimah said.

Meanwhile, on its Twitter account, most of Al Qassam’s tweets link to the jihad group’s official English website, Qassam.ps.

The profile of the Al Qassam Brigade Twitter account reads: “The official web site of Al Qassam Brigades in Palestine. Gaza, Palestine, www.qassam.ps.”

The website, Qassam.ps, does not disguise its militant agenda. Its mission statement relates, “The Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades works to evoke the spirit of Jihad (resistance) amongst Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.”

Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigade is on the State Department’s official list of terrorist organizations.

Besides its recent rocketing of Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, the group is responsible for some of the most deadly and infamous terrorist attacks in Israeli history, including the suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover eve that killed 30 and injured 140; a 2001 suicide bombing at Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem killing 15 and wounding 130; and the 2001 suicide bombing of Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium nightclub in which 21 were killed and 120 were injured.